DEVELOPMENT OF A PROGRESS MONITORING TOOL
FOR UPPER PRIMARY STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
RESEARCH GROUP LANGUAGE, LEARNING, INNOVATION
Authors: Bogaert, Rielke, Aesaert, Koen, Merchie, Emmelien & Van Keer, Hilde
Background Research objective
Method
Reading comprehension
• Key competence in 21st century
• ↓ reading comprehension skills
Upper primary education
• Critical period
• Lack of necessary
comprehension skills
Progress monitoring
• Promotes students’ reading comprehension
• Lack of appropriate progress monitoring tools
Development of a Reading Comprehension - Progress Monitoring (RC-PM) tool for upper primary students
Rielke.Bogaert@ugent.be
REFERENCES CONTACT
1 American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: Author.
2 van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. San Diego, CA.: Academic Press.
1. Test specifications
o Items < construction-integration model (CI) 2
§ Surface structure
§ Textbase model
§ Situation model o Expository texts (
n
= 60)§ < domains secondary education
§ Short (+/- 100 words)
ó long (250-500 words)
2. Item development
o By reading expert panel
o Creating multiple choice questions (MC)
§ Covering CI-model 2
§ Three-options
§ Eight to fifteen items per text
Theoretical and educational significance
3. Item review
o MC items
§ Upper primary teachers
§ Educational experts
o Texts: fluency and comprehension level
§ Dutch center of educational measurement (CITO)
o Fifth-grade (
n
= 22) pilot class o Final test pool• 35 texts (10 short; 25 long)
• Eigth to twelve MC items/text
4. Test administration: stepwise system (see figure) o Two anchor texts
o Other texts: 20 groups of 150 students o Overlap in texts across 20 groups
Test development
~
guidelines provided in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing 1Responding to the need for a theoretically and empirically substantiated tool to monitor upper primary students’ progress in reading comprehension
Tool can support teachers to make substantiated instructional decisions based on students’ specific needs
Research Practice
• 3269 Flemish upper primary school students
• 167 classes in 68 schools
Results
Participants
Cross-sectional research including a reading comprehension test
Design
• Automated test assembly (IRT) in R
• Estimating item parameters by two- parameter logistic model (2PLM)
Data-analysis
Six equivalent test versions (i.e., < item difficulty)
• Two to three texts
• 17 to 18 test items
